While I was gone: WPC, Windows, Windows Phone, PopCap, tablets

Apologies to loyal readers (and not-so-loyal readers, too) – you just witnessed another four-day hiatus from regular Microsoft Blog news. Rest assured, I’ll get you back up-to-date right now.

Steve Ballmer speaks at WPC on Monday.

This week marks Microsoft’s big Worldwide Partner Conference at Staples Center in Los Angeles, though it’s interesting how little news comes out of such a huge event. But there’s plenty to wrap up this morning, so here goes.

Microsoft’s Bing search engine is one of the Microsoft products that Redmond’s shareholders — not to mention many Wall Streeters who watch Microsoft — love to hate. But Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is bullish on Bing.

Microsoft’s default Windows 8 interface, unveiled last month, was clearly modeled in part after the Xbox Live and Windows Phone design — aiming to give the company more consistency across its various devices and software platforms. But Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer drove home the point when he showed this slide this morning during the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference, talking about the company’s larger goals.

Judges in both the U.S. and Canada have approved a deal that will allow Microsoft, Apple and other tech giants to buy up a trove of more than 6,000 patent and patent applications from the bankrupt Nortel Networks.

The head of Microsoft’s Windows Phone division believes the company and its partners can cut the costs of smartphones running the company’s mobile operating system by as much as half over the next year as a plethora of new devices hit the market.

Microsoft launched its revamped Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system back in October, but so far the company has yet to say how many WP7 devices have been sold. The company is quick to release numbers when things are going well – such as with its Kinect motion sensor product – so the implication is that Windows Phone 7 isn’t setting the mobile world on fire.

Bellevue-based Intellectual Ventures — the patent licensing company led by former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold and backed by Bill Gates — is suing two of the largest memory chip makers and most of the world’s major PC companies.

Now that Electronic Arts has agreed to buy PopCap Games for up to $1.3 billion, Microsoft can mark down the online gaming company has “the one that go away.” Microsoft had at least two chances to make a deal many years before online casual games became a mighty moneymaker.